


reynolds vs. reynolds: the lent incident

by golden_geese



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: and... THIS is the travesty i come up with, but like... that's just cannon compliant tbh, everyone in this show is stupid and i love all of them, i didn't write it, i love this show and its dumb tropes :], i'll do better next time, lowkey tossed in some sensory overload stuff bc sensory overload dennis is everything, my apologies poor anon, my brother described this fic by saying "dennis gave up his arm for lent rip", the anon wanted a fic where dennis breaks his arm and mac takes care of him, there are little baby macdennis hints, this fic wrote me, this was a request that got away from me tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_geese/pseuds/golden_geese
Summary: dennis' arm is broken. he's certain it's dee's fault. she's certain it's not. no one is allowed to leave until an understanding is reached.





	reynolds vs. reynolds: the lent incident

1:26 pm  
A Tuesday

“He’s being a little bitch baby.”

“He’s not being a little bitch baby,” Mac argues loudly, shooting a warning glance at Dee.

(Dennis is totally being a little bitch baby.) 

“I dunno, man, he’s asked me to bring him stuff like a hundred times already today and it isn’t even noon,” Charlie says, crossing his arms.

“It’s one-twenty-six, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, we all know what time it is, Mac. He’s gettin’ too bossy. I don’t like it. It’s bad for morale. Bad for business. Look at this place. It’s empty. We’re bummin’ everybody out ‘cause we got a guy in a cast.”

The same three or four old dudes that were always in Paddy’s were quietly sipping on beers. 

“I can hear you, you know,” Dennis says from the booth he’s posted up in.

“I’m getting your beer, dude, one sec,” Mac says quickly, shooting a glare at Dee and Charlie before heading behind the bar.

“Get your own damn beer, Dennis, your arm is broken, not your leg,” Dee huffs, turning back to her app game.

“Moving makes my shoulder hurt, Dee, you bitch,” he says irrelevantly after the door is closed.

“No worries, bro. Here you go.” Coming back to the booth, Mac opens the beer and puts it on the table in front of Dennis. He nudges the bottle closer to him.

“Thank you,” Dennis says, almost smug, as Mac sits down across from him. “At least one of you is loyal. You’d think my own sister might be.”

“Charlie’s loyal, he just easily bored of doing stuff for people.”

“We should put up a sign in the bar,” Dennis says as if he didn’t hear Mac. 

“...what kind of sign?”

“I’m getting there. Can I talk? Can I share my idea on my own time, Mac?”

“Sure, yeah, I guess.”

“A sign that says you can’t have the wifi password unless you buy three drinks,” Dennis goes on, taking a sip of his beer.

“Whoa, great idea, dude.”

“People will buy more drinks so they can get enough for the wifi,” Dennis continues, nodding.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Frank pipes up, walking past where Dennis and Mac are sitting on his way to Charlie. “And Dennis, what the hell are ya doing, you’re lazy, don’t make Charlie get you beers all the time.”

“Charlie didn’t get him that beer, I did,” Mac insists. His voice carries the cadence of someone tattling on their sibling.

“I gotta take care of the new rats, guys,” Charlie says, pulling his rat stick out from behind the bar. “I can’t get you beer, Dennis.”

“I already got it for him,” Mac says, louder. 

“What new rats?” Frank asks Charlie, ignoring Mac.

“The new rats,” Charlie repeats. “You know-- the new ones. The next generation. The kids. The youth of the streets. They’re all hunkered down in the basement. I’m gonna get ‘em. You know, Dennis, I do a lot of work around here, if anyone should be getting beers for anyone else, it’s me.”

Dennis’ eyebrows knit together. “...That sounds like you’re insisting upon getting me beers, Charlie.”

“No, well, that’s not-- I gotta-- the rats, y’know?” He heads down to the basement. 

“How’d you even hurt your arm, Dennis?” Frank asks.

“It was Dee’s fault,” Dennis starts, taking a sip of his beer in some convoluted intention of adding suspense. 

“It was not,” Dee interjects from the bar, practically shouting across the room. 

“It was,” Dennis dismisses. 

“I was there, I saw it, it totally was,” Mac agrees.

“What are you-- you weren’t there, Mac,” Dennis says, eyebrows twisting up in confusion.

“I’ll be the judge of whose fault it was, kids,” Frank says, crossing his arms. “Tell me everything.”

“If you’re going to tell him the story, I’m going to be involved, because otherwise you’ll completely make shit up and everything will be my fault,” Dee says, already marching over. She sits next to her brother. 

“Well, Dee, everything _is_ your fault already, so…”

Frank takes a seat on a stool, towering above the other three. “Dennis, whenever you’re ready.”

Dennis takes a breath, turning his beer bottle around on the table. “It all started with lent,” he begins. 

“No, dude, come on, you are not about to blame your shit on the lord,” Mac cuts him off, shaking his head emphatically.

“I’m not blaming it on some ghost in the sky,” Dennis says. “I’m just trying to give Frank all the details. Will you let me talk, Mac?”

A bit huffy, Mac leans back against the booth.

“As I was saying,” Dennis continues, “Mac kept agonizing about what to give up for lent. I mean, the guy wouldn’t shut up about it. First it was going to be weed, but I reminded him he doesn’t even smoke weed hardly ever anymore-- then it was going to be pizza, but that wasn’t big enough either, then it was going to be wearing a jacket, but if he catches a cold I’m going to get it and, dammit, I’m not about to get sick just so Mac can do his little penance thing. Finally, after days and days of babbling like an idiot, he decided to give up hair gel for lent.”

“How’s this got anything to do with you breaking your arm?” Frank asks.

“I’m getting there. Would all of you stop interrupting me? Please? You especially, Dee, you’ve interrupted me at least three times now and I’m sick of it. Anyway, like I was saying-- Mac decided to give up hair gel for lent.”

“Only thirty days left,” Mac says under his breath.

“I thought, great, he’ll shut up about stupid lent and I won’t have to listen to him anymore. But I was wrong. I was so wrong, Frank. Because, if anything, he started talking about lent more-- every morning it’s does my hair look alright, Dennis? I feel like my hair looks bad, Dennis. How do you make hair look good without gel, Dennis?” He rolls his eyes, taking another sip of beer. “And with his hair all fluffy, it’s like I can’t stop seeing it. Everywhere I look-- there’s Mac with his fluffy sticky-uppy hair. It’s distracting, Mac.”

“Why is it distracting?” Dee asks.

“Because it’s different. Because-- because he doesn’t look like the top of a Q-tip dipped in shoe polish anymore. Because-- this is off topic, really, Dee, I can’t have you interrupting me--” he shakes his head a little to center himself. His cheeks are a little rosy, his movements a little extra jerky. “Point is, it was distracting. And annoying. So annoying, Frank, you can’t imagine-- I’ve been living with Mac for half my life, I’m used to putting up with him, but this-- this was something new. I couldn’t stand it. _Does my hair look okay, Dennis? I’m so amazing for giving up hair gel, I’m Jesus’ best boy ever,_ blah blah blah. So I had to get out of there. Obviously.”

“I didn’t say that,” Mac insists.

Dennis ignores him. “So I need to get away from Mac. So where do I go? Well, I go to the mall for a little while. I used to hang out at the mall all the time, it’ll be fun-- it’s not fun. It’s a bunch of teenagers and people yelling in different languages. So I resort to paying my twin sister a visit.” He gestures to Dee, as if everyone in the bar is strangers and the fact that Dennis has a twin sister is a huge plot twist. “I head over to her apartment. I knock on her door. I’m her brother, I can show up unannounced, right?” He pauses, making slow eye contact with Dee, then Mac, then Frank before speaking again. “Wrong. Because when I get there, she’s sweating up a storm, doing this exercise aerobics video of some sort-- and she has the audacity to be annoyed that I interrupted her.”

“You did interrupt me,” Dee cuts in. “And you turned my TV off and took the batteries out of my remote so I couldn’t turn it back on. Because you were that desperate for attention. Because you’re a grown-ass adult who gets mad when his sister does something that doesn’t involve him.”

“You are painting a completely false narrative, Dee, I suggest you shut up,” Dennis says, eyebrows raised. “I don’t give a fuck what you do. Set yourself on fire, for all I care. I was just bored and I needed a place to go that wasn’t filled with Mac’s hair gel anguish. So I seeked refuge with the one person who should always be there for me. And she didn’t even care.”

“Oh my god,” Dee huffs. “I was just trying to do a workout, Dennis.”

“So I convince Dee to watch some crime shows with me,” Dennis goes on, ignoring his sister. “And we’re drinking beer, watching the show-- and it’s Law and Order SVU, you know, it’s all about rape and murder and abuse-- and this old lady on it was being abused by her sister, who was supposed to be taking care of her, but she couldn’t talk so there wasn’t anything she could do about it. And it got me thinking about Poppop, and I was wondering if anyone did anything like that to him in the retirement home-- so I asked Dee what she thought of that, and she called me disgusting and perverted. So I explained, of course, that I wasn’t asking because i was interested-- I was simply curious, you know, I’m a curious man, a _compassionate_ man, I was wondering if this phenomenon of elder abuse-- which, I looked it up and it is very common-- was happening under our noses all this time. As I explained this to her, calmly, collected, civilly, she became increasingly more annoyed with me and she ended up shoving me in the arm. I think she was on her period. When she pushed me, she made me spill my beer onto my pants. I calmly expressed my frustration with the matter and took them off so I didn’t have to wear soaking wet jeans that smelled like beer.”

“Calmly,” Dee repeats. “Dennis, you were screaming. That vein in your neck was bright red and all the way out. You called me the c-word.”

“Regardless of who called who what, my pants came off,” he continued, scoffing a little. “And Dee was being a bitch, as usual, as she is right now. And we kept watching Law and Order, and drank more beer, and everything was fine. And then Dee just started farting up a storm.”

“No,” Dee cut in. “I was not farting. I don’t know what that smell was, but it wasn’t me.”

“Well, it wasn’t me, so who the fuck was it, then?” Dennis demands.

“It was like burnt food or something. Do you think I can fart out that smell? You’re insane, Dennis. It was my neighbors cooking or something.”

Dennis huffs, rolling his eyes. “Well, whatever it was, it was just terrible. It’s all I could think about. It was filling my entire consciousness, Frank.”

“Like when you were a kid and you used to have tantrums about the smell of the cafeteria at your elementary school,” Frank comments lazily.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t have _tantrums_. Anyway. It was awful. I couldn’t even hear the show anymore, it was so bad. I opened the window to try to air the place out a little, but it’s still just overwhelmingly awful. So I ask my sister, do you have any Febreze or scented candles or something? And she gets out a bunch of candles and lights like five of them, _different scents, mind you,_ and it’s almost worse because it’s just-- it’s stronger. So when she goes to get another beer, I blow out all of the candles except for one. I just don’t get it, Mac always does it too-- what kind of sociopath lights candles that smell differently all at once? Unbelievable. So she comes back, and she’s all mad at me, because I ruined her very special candles.”

“You blew them out before they had burned evenly across,” Dee interjected. “That means next time I light them, it wouldn't burn evenly again, and a bunch of the wax is wasted. Candles are expensive.”

“They’re like five dollars,” Dennis dismisses. “If you didn’t burn ten at once you wouldn’t go through so many. Anyway. So to spite me, Dee went into her room and set off the smoke detector. And, mind you, I’m still not wearing pants-- and I think there’s a real fire, so I’m scrambling to get my jeans back on. But I’d left them right by the open window. So as I’m trying to get into them, I trip, and I fall out the window and I land on the fire escape stairs, and that’s how my arm got broken. It’s all Dee’s fault,” Dennis concludes.

“Wow, Deandra, you really did it-- you broke your only brother’s arm. You should be ashamed of yourself,” Frank says, nudging his glasses back into place.

“Okay, except that entire last part is completely false,” Dee says, her nostrils flaring a little. “Here’s what really happened.”

“Please,” Dennis says sarcastically, but he doesn’t stop her.

“I was annoyed about the candles. I was trying to flatten out the half-melted wax to even it out so it wouldn’t be wasted, and it would burn evenly the next time. I was doing it in my room because I was sick of being around my jerkoff of a brother. And then the fire alarm went off-- because my neighbors were burning food,” she insists.

“You did it just to spite me,” Dennis snaps. “Just to make me look stupid. You did. Don’t deny it. You bitch. You bird. Bird… bitch.”

“Wow, Dennis, bird bitch? You’re so creative,” she taunts. “Why would I set my own fire alarm off? How would that even spite you?”

“The beeps,” Mac says wisely.

Dennis blinks. “Stop. Everyone just stop. Dee, admit that you did it just to fuck with me, and let’s be done.”

“No,” Dee says. “I want to know what Frank thinks.”

Frank frowns, exhaling through his nose. “Well… this whole thing started with lent… so I think it’s Mac’s fault.”

“What? Come on, dude!”

“It’s clearly my demon sister’s fault!”

“Mac isn’t even involved!”

“That’s my final ruling,” Frank says, holding a hand up.

“That’s bullshit, man, it’s not Mac’s fault,” Dennis insists. “Mac wasn’t even there. He was at our apartment praying or putting Crisco in his hair or something. It was Dee. It was Dee’s fault I fell onto the fire escape with my pants around my ankles and it’s Dee’s fault I broke my arm.”

“Yeah, bro, I wasn’t even there,” Mac repeats.

“Do you want to get Charlie up here for a second opinion?”

Dennis and Dee both sigh, almost completely synchronized. “Fine,” Dennis says. “If we must.”

+

2:46 pm

“...They were cooking, they’re always cooking, they were burning their weird food and they set the fire alarm off. Frankly I think they’re cooking illegal meat, maybe even human-- we should call the cops on them. But whatever they were cooking, they set of the fire alarm. It wasn’t me,” Dee finishes, nearly an hour of argument later.

“I see, I see,” Charlie says, nodding slowly. “And where is it that the, uh… _birds_ come in?”

“Who told you this has anything to do with birds, dude?” Mac asks, making a face.

“Well, you know, I just figured it did-- since you asked for my professional opinion on the matter,” Charlie says, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “If it doesn’t have birds, I’m afraid I don’t have any German friction over the case.”

Dee’s eyebrows scrunch up. “German…”

“Do you mean _jurisdiction_ , man?” Mac asks.

“That’s what I said,” Charlie says. 

“Uh-- anyway, we’re just asking for your opinion,” Dennis says. “What do you think? Is it Dee’s fault or was it a freak accident? It was Dee’s fault, huh, bro?”

“Well…”

“It wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t a freak accident,” Dee says. “Dennis is the one who broke into my apartment and insisted on watching Law and Order on my couch.”

“It’s Mac’s fault, Charlie,” Frank adds.

“Everyone stop,” Mac says loudly. “Let the man think.”

“Can you guys just explain it one more time, maybe do it better this time so I can decide?”

Dennis sighs. “Fine.”

+  
5:27 pm

“... and Dee was setting candles on fire, trying to smoke me out of her apartment,” Dennis finishes. “Her own brother. Can you believe it, Charlie?”

“Well, I don’t know if I have enough information to rule,” Charlie says, folding his hands on the table. “I still don’t understand why you two were naked.”

“For shit’s sake-- we weren’t naked,” Dee huffs. “Dennis didn’t have pants on. Every other piece of clothing that was supposed to be there was there.”

“I’m not going to hang out with my sister naked, dude, gross,” Dennis agrees.

“Can I just hear the part with the exercise tape one more time?”

+  
8:52 pm

“...so my neighbors were trying to burn the building down or some shit,” Dee finishes, taking a long swig of beer. “Can we figure out who’s responsible already?”

“Yeah,” Dennis says. “I’m sick of this. We’ve been at it for hours. I’m injured. I need to go home and rest.”

“Yeah, you should get off your feet,” Mac agrees, though they’ve all been sitting for most of the day. “Let’s just do a popular vote. Everyone who thinks it was me, raise your hand.”

Frank raises his hand.

Mac rolls his eyes. “Okay, one. Everyone who thinks it was Dennis, raise your hand.”

Dee raises her hand. Charlie raises his hand.

“Oh, come on, dude, what the hell?” Mac demands.

“Disloyal traitor,” Dennis adds.

“I dunno, dude, the way I see it you put yourself in danger by taking your pants off,” Charlie says, shrugging. “That was a risk you chose to take, man.”

“Fuck you guys,” Dennis snaps.

“Whoa, hey, hold on,” Mac says, touching Dennis’ shoulder. “Everyone who thinks it’s totally and completely Dee’s fault, raise your hand.”

He raises his hand. Dennis raises his good arm.

“It’s a tie,” Mac says.

“Yeah, obviously. Why did you even make me raise my hand? Obviously I was going to vote for myself. We haven’t made any progress at all,” Dennis huffs. 

“Nobody is leaving until we figure out whose fault this is,” Mac insists.

+  
11:17 pm

“I’m leaving,” Dee announces, standing up. “I don’t give a shit. I’m leaving. I didn’t break your stupid wimpy arm, Dennis.”

“Yeah, man, I’m kind of starting to think it’s Frank’s fault,” Charlie says, side-eyeing his roommate.

“Aw, come on, Charlie. It’s Dennis’ fault.”

“It’s Mac’s fault!” Dee shouts. “I’m going home.”

“Wait, wait, just one second, Dee,” Mac says. “Let’s just do another vote. Let’s just go around the circle and say who we think broke Dennis’ arm. Charlie thinks it was Frank. Frank thinks it was Dennis. Dee thinks it was me. I still think it was Dee. Den?”

“I kind of think it was Charlie now,” he sighs.

“God dammit,” Dee huffs. “We’re not going to figure it out, assholes. Let’s just agree it doesn’t fucking matter and all go home.”

“It matters,” Dennis insists. “Whoever’s fault it was-- I could have died.”

“You were never gonna die, bro,” Mac dismisses. “I would have come and saved you.”

“You weren’t even in the building!” Dennis shouts.

“Yes, I was.”

“You were?”

“It doesn’t matter who was in the building and who was across Philly,” Charlie says. “What matters is that nobody died and nobody ate the bad spaghetti sauce and everyone is okay.”

“I’m not okay! My fucking arm is shattered!”

“Oh, you big baby, it’s broken in one place,” Dee snaps.

“Hold on, I might have a solution,” Charlie says, frowning pensively. “Mac’s had his opinion for the longest, yes?”

Mac blinks. “Yeah, dude.”

“We’ve all changed our opinions, but Mac never did. Mac said it was Dee from day one. So let’s just respect the long cavity of Mac’s opinion and call him the de facto right person and all go home.”

“Dennis? What do you think?” Mac asks.

Dennis sighs again. “I’m fine with that. As long as none of you asswipes breaks any of my bones ever again.”

“Fine,” Charlie says. 

Frank shrugs, nodding.

“Are you shitting me?” Dee asks.

“Can we all agree that none of us are going to break any of Dennis’ bones going forward?” Mac asks diplomatically, completely ignoring Dee.

“I’ll allow it,” Charlie says.

“I agree,” Frank adds.

“Okay,” Mac says. “Nobody is going to break any of Dennis’ bones ever again and we’re going to say Dee did it this time. It’s like I always say-- if you let civility reign, you can always come to an understanding. Let’s go home and get that arm on ice, Dennis.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is a request from my tumblr! follow at golden-geese.tumblr.com :) your request can be next!!


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